The Old New Thing

Which windows appear in the Alt+Tab list?

October 8, 2007 Oct 8, 2007 10/8/07
Raymond Chen
Commenter Phil Quirk wants to know what the rules are for determining which windows appear in the Alt+Tab list. It's actually pretty simple although hardly anything you'd be able to guess on your own. Note: The details of this algorithm are an implementation detail. It can change at any time, so don't rely on it. In fact, it already changed ...

The dangers of taking a service droid off script

October 5, 2007 Oct 5, 2007 10/5/07
Raymond Chen
In the discussion last year regarding retail companies allegedly not collecting personal information as aggressively, a few people mentioned tactics for confusing salesdroids. For a while, I would intentionally confuse salesdroids by using my passport as identification. But far more frustrating is when I manage to confuse salesdroids ...

The early days of the Microsoft cafeterias

October 5, 2007 Oct 5, 2007 10/5/07
Raymond Chen
A tour of Redmond campus cafeterias back in the old days took much less time than it would require nowadays. Back then, the cafeterias were tiny affairs, the size of maybe three offices not counting the prep area, with a seating capacity of maybe a dozen tables. Each cafeteria had a theme, so going to lunch back in the day was not "Let's go ...

Another celebrity knitter: Tracey Ullman

October 3, 2007 Oct 3, 2007 10/3/07
Raymond Chen
Tracey Ullman joins the roster of celebrity knitters with her book Knit 2 Together: Patterns and Stories for Serious Knitting Fun. (She also gets to add to the pile of books whose titles are of the form Catchy title: Long boring subtitle...

Don't assume the first person to run your program is an administrator

October 2, 2007 Oct 2, 2007 10/2/07
Raymond Chen
One "optimization" I've seen from some programs is to defer a bunch of system configuration work to the first time the program is run or the first time a feature is requested instead of doing it at install time. The problem with this is that the first person to run your program is not guaranteed to be an administrator. For example, there is ...

Suggestion Box 3, short answers (part 1 of who knows how many)

October 1, 2007 Oct 1, 2007 10/1/07
Raymond Chen
Some suggestion box topics turn into daily entries. Others deserve just a sentence or two. Here are the short answers. Can you shed some light on RPC_E_CANTCALLOUT_ININPUTSYNCCALL? This one is kind of bizarre, because the person who asked the question linked to the answer! What form do application hacks usually ...